OSM Worldwide: 2024 Holiday Season Shipping Schedule

The busy seasons are both a blessing and a challenge for e-commerce businesses. Whether it's the holiday rush, back-to-school season, Black Friday or any other peak period, increased demand brings with it the potential for significant revenue, but only if your shipping operations can keep up.

In this article, we'll explore key strategies for effectively scaling your shipping operations during busy seasons, ensuring your business can handle the increased volume without compromising on service quality.

Forecasting Demand Accurately

The foundation of scaling your shipping operations lies in demand forecasting. By analyzing historical sales data, market trends, and customer behavior, you can best predict the volume of orders and products you'll need to fulfill during peak periods. This information allows you to plan your inventory, staffing, and logistics accordingly.

Optimizing Inventory Management

Efficient inventory management is critical during busy seasons. Overstocking can lead to unnecessary storage costs, while understocking can result in missed sales opportunities, delayed shipments and unhappy customers. The key is to find the right balance. To stay ahead of inventory needs, work closely with suppliers to ensure timely restocking and leverage inventory management for clear and real-time insights to stock levels. With any management system, implement regular inventory checks to reduce the risk of any mistakes. 

Streamlining Fulfillment Processes

As order volumes increase, your fulfillment processes need to be as efficient as possible. Streamlining and automating these processes helps reduce the time it takes to pick, pack, and ship orders, minimizing the risk of delays and errors. For example, batch processing orders significantly speeds up order fulfillment, allowing you to get more orders out of the warehouse, in less time. 

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Learn how VESYL automations are improving fulfillment efficiency for businesses.

Enhancing Warehouse Operations

Your warehouse is the heart of your shipping operations, and its efficiency can make or break your ability to scale. During busy seasons, optimizing your warehouse layout, staff training, and workflow processes is essential. For example, you can create a "Golden Zone," where the top 20% of SKUs that account for 80% of your orders are stored. This zone should be located near the packing and shipping stations to minimize the distance these items travel.

Leveraging Multiple Carriers

Relying on a single carrier during busy seasons can be risky. Carrier delays or capacity issues can disrupt your fulfillment. By working with multiple carriers, you can mitigate these risks, ensure timely deliveries and save on costs.

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With VESYL, we deliver the best-in-class shipping rates across multiple carriers in just a few clicks, allowing you to make the most informed decisions for your shipments, without sacrificing flexibility.

Implementing Flexible Shipping Options

Customers expect fast and reliable delivery, especially during busy seasons. By offering flexible shipping options such as expedited shipping, same-day delivery, or in-store pickup, you can meet customer’s expectations and improve their experience. It’s important to clearly communicate shipping options and cut-off dates for guaranteed delivery on your website. 

Outsourcing Fulfillment and Logistics

For many e-commerce businesses, outsourcing fulfillment and logistics to third-party providers (3PLs) is a scalable solution during peak seasons. 3PLs can offer additional storage space, advanced technology, and expertise in managing high volumes, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business. However, 3PL’s can come with their own set of challenges such as a large initial investment and limited visibility. 

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Alternatively, businesses can leverage shipping software. At VESYL, brands can simply connect their stores, import orders, run shipping automations, such as assigning particular products to certain package sizes or shipping rates, batch purchase up to 500 shipping labels at once at the best rates, and print labels with their corresponding packing list. This allows businesses to manage their fulfillment internally while still saving time and money on shipping. 

Enhancing Customer Communication

During busy seasons, clear communication with customers is vital. Be sure to keep them informed about order status, shipping timelines, and any potential delays. This transparency can help manage expectations and reduce customer frustration. You can utilize automated email notifications and SMS alerts to keep customers updated throughout the fulfillment process.

Preparing for Returns and Exchanges

Both brands and customers would prefer to get it right the first time but as we know, it doesn’t always go that way. Busy seasons can often lead to increased returns and exchanges, especially during the gifting season. Preparing for this influx is crucial to maintaining customer satisfaction and minimizing operational disruptions.

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Streamline your returns process by providing clear instructions and offering easy-to-print return labels or QR codes. You can also consider using a returns management software that automates the process and provides customers with instant refunds or exchanges.

Conclusion

The key to a successful busy season is ensuring your fulfillment can keep up. By forecasting demand, optimizing inventory and warehouse management, leveraging multiple carriers, and enhancing customer communication, you can ensure a smooth and successful peak season. Finally, be sure to track, record and analyze for continuous improvement and business success.

With Black Friday and the holiday season just around the corner, businesses can expect a surge of shoppers eager to get in the gifting spirit and take advantage of seasonal deals. This influx brings a great opportunity for increased sales, but it also comes with the complexities of increased shipping demands.

To keep up with the growing volume of orders, carriers like USPS have announced temporary price adjustments for the 2024 peak holiday season. Effective from October 6, 2024, through January 19, 2025, these rate changes will impact Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, and USPS Ground Advantage shipments.

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What Are Peak Season Surcharges?

These holiday surcharges help USPS cover additional costs associated with labor, fuel, and supplies during the peak shipping months to ensure they can maintain service standards while managing higher volumes. Staying informed about these changes is key to plan accordingly and maintain a seamless delivery experience for customers, so we’ve packaged them up for you below.

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Commercial Increases

Priority Mail and USPS Ground Advantage: Zones 1-4

• $0.30 increase for 0-3 lbs.
• $0.45 increase for 4-10 lbs.
• $0.75 increase for 11-25 lbs.
• $3.00 increase for 26-70 lbs. 

Priority Mail: Zones 5-9

• $0.70 increase for 0-3 lbs.
• $1.25 increase for 4-10 lbs.
• $2.75 increase for 11-25 lbs.
• $7.00 increase for 26-70 lbs.

USPS Ground Advantage: Zones 5-9

• $0.35 increase for 0-3 lbs.
• $0.75 increase for 4-10 lbs.
• $1.25 increase for 11-25 lbs.
• $5.50 increase for 26-70 lbs.

Priority Mail Express: Zones 1-4

• $1.00 increase for 0-3 lbs. 
• $1.50 increase for 4-10 lbs.
• $3.50 increase for 11-25 lbs.
• $8.95 increase for 26-70 lbs

Priority Mail Express: Zone 5-9

$1.75 increase for 0-3 lbs.

$3.95 increase for 4-10 lbs.

$7.50 increase for 11-25 lbs.

$13.00 increase for 26-70 lbs.

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Retail Increases

Priority Mail and USPS Ground Advantage: Zones 1-4

$0.40 increase for 0-3 lbs.

$0.55 increase for 4-10 lbs

$0.95 increase for 11-25 lbs. 

$4.00 increase for 26-70 lbs.

Priority Mail: Zones 5-9

$0.90 increase for 0-3 lbs.

$1.45 increase for 4-10 lbs.

$3.25 increase for 11-25 lbs.

$8.50 increase for 26-70 lbs.

USPS Ground Advantage: Zones 5-9

$0.50 increase for 0-3 lbs.

$1.00 increase for 4-10 lbs.

$2.00 increase for 11-25 lbs.

$5.85 increase for 26-70 lbs.

Priority Mail Express: Zones 1-4

$1.10 increase for 0-3 lbs.

$2.00 increase for 4-10 lbs.

$3.90 increase for 11-25 lbs.

$9.75 increase for 26-70 lbs.

Priority Mail Express: Zones 5-9

$2.00 increase for 0-3 lbs.

$4.85 increase for 4-10 lbs.

$9.00 increase for 11-25 lbs.

$16.00 increase for 26-70 lbs.

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How Can Businesses Still Save On Shipping?

Despite the USPS price increases during the holiday season, merchants still have opportunities to save on shipping costs. By using VESYL, brands can shop the best-in-class rates across multiple carriers, streamline operations, reduce labor costs, and minimize errors through automation, further maximizing efficiency and cutting down unnecessary expenses. By streamlining shipping operations, merchants can offset the impact of seasonal surcharges while still delivering an exceptional customer experience during the busiest time of the year.

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Schedule a quick 15-minute call with us and we’ll show you how!

With the average return rates for e-commerce stores between 20-30%, according to Shopify,  return logistics can no longer be overlooked. Not only does smooth returns enhance the customer experience, but also removes costly and timely bottlenecks for brands. In this guide, we'll dive into the world of return logistics, exploring best practices and strategies.

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The Importance of Return Logistics

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Return logistics are the processes involved in handling product returns, exchanges, and refunds in the e-commerce ecosystem. The inability to touch, try and see items in person first, make returns an inevitable part of e-commerce. Whether it’s due to sizing or fit issues, a defective or faulty item, or a number of other potential reasons, providing a smooth returns process can enhance your brand reputation, customer loyalty and give you the competitive edge. Think of it as the brand's opportunity to shift a negative experience into a positive and memorable one. 

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Best Practices in Return Logistics

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Clear and Transparent Return Policies

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A clear and transparent return policy removes the guesswork and lets your customers know exactly what to expect if they need to return or exchange an item. This increased transparency builds trust with customers and leads to loyal customers. 

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The return policy should be easily accessible on your website. Some brands choose to include it in a drop down menu on the product listing itself along with sizing and product information. This enables customers to make informed decisions without needing to search the website or contact the CX team. 

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A clear and transparent returns policy needs to include:

• The time frame for returns and exchanges period. Most customers expect a 30 day return policy.
• The conditions required for all returned products.
• If you have different policies and requirements for different products, make sure these are clearly outlined and communicated. 
• Clearly outline any return costs. Free returns are a big draw for online shoppers. Brands can also outline different costs for different return reasons, such as the customer is required to pay the return fees if the reason for return is that they changed their mind. However, for a faulty or damaged product, the brand covers the return fees. 
• Give clear step-by-step instructions on how customers can initiate a return. Include key information about whether they need to return the item in the original packaging, where they can locate the return label and once again the condition the item needs to be returned in. (For more straightforward returns, leverage VESYL’s QR codes, allowing customers to download the QR code and take it to their local drop off point, without needing to print any labels.)

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Simplified Return Processes

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Streamline the returns process by providing multiple return options like online returns, in-store returns, or drop-off locations. This accommodates varying customer preferences and situations, ensuring convenience and flexibility. For example, Amazon's "Online Returns Center" simplifies returns with a user-friendly interface, allowing customers to initiate returns swiftly and effortlessly. By diversifying return channels and leveraging user-friendly platforms, businesses can optimize the returns experience, reduce friction, and ultimately foster stronger customer relationships. Brands can also leverage returns software to centralize return tickets in one place, provide a simple user interface for customers to use and provide detailed information on the progress of the return. 

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Within shipments on VESYL, under actions, you can create a return label on a shipment, allowing you to quickly and easily get return labels over to your customer to return an item.

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Efficient Return Handling

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To optimize efficiency in return handling, it's essential to invest in streamlined procedures that minimize processing time and costs. Automation tools and dedicated teams play a crucial role in managing returns promptly and accurately. By leveraging automated return processing systems, like ASOS does, businesses can efficiently handle high volumes of returns, mitigating manual workload and reducing processing time. This not only enhances operational efficiency but also ensures timely resolution for customers, leading to improved satisfaction and retention. Embracing technology and implementing efficient workflows are key strategies to increase efficiency in return management, ultimately driving better outcomes for both businesses and customers.

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Encouraging Exchanges Over Returns

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By offering incentives such as free return shipping labels for exchanges or store credits, businesses can incentivize customers to opt for exchanges, retaining revenue and fostering positive relationships. For example, brands can offer a gift card for a slightly higher value than the original purchase to encourage customers to continue their journey with the brand. Finally, by leveraging easy-to-use exchanges software allows customers to quickly pick the product size, color or type they wanted to exchange for. This streamlines the process by reducing the need to speak to a CX representative and providing the customer with the options at their fingertips.

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In Conclusion

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With the increase in online shopping, the demand for excellent customer service and quicker resolutions, mastering return logistics can set your brand ahead in an increasingly competitive landscape. By implementing best practices such as clear return policies, simplified processes, and encouraging exchanges, businesses can streamline their return logistics while providing exceptional customer experiences. Remember, prioritizing exchanges over returns not only reduces the strain on your team but also strengthens customer relationships, ultimately driving long-term success.